Wednesday, December 17, 2008


My guilt monster prods me, whispering, You should be writing more. The talent, it's going to die, you know. Use it or lose it, dummy.

I pinch the guilt monster and push it off my shoulder, I am writing, dummy. I blog.

Hopping back up on my shoulder and pulling my hair for spite, Not the same, It says, Not the same. Blogging isn't writing, or at least not your blog. Your blogging is lazy writing. You rag the text, for goodness' sake. You don't put on your creative head. You don't dig for words that really do mean what you're trying to say. In fact, are you trying to say anything at all? And if not trying to say something significant, are you at least trying to do the insignificant well?

I don't push the guilt monster away this time. I let it sit, letting my mind linger on its sotto voce admonishments.

It's right, you know. I don't try. This isn't writing. I'm not reading enough literature these days, and I feel like a traitor to my efforts if I haven't been nurturing them, so they go neglected altogether. To write, one must read. So I don't write, for I am not reading.

Yes, yes, the blog is words on a page, but not words I felt for, hunted for, and found a deep need to massage because they deserved a place in my sacred space. Here, I write in found fragments. The indicator combinations here weren't created, they were clumsily happened upon. They're more colloquial than if I tried, edited, and rewrote; for my strength in writing is the second, third, fourth and fifth time through. My power is in editing for meaning, flow, and cadence. I don't do that on the blog. I don't really care. Granted, there are times that I do post something I've written, worked on; but those times are few.

So what's it for, if I'm not truly using el blog as writing space? If I'm not caring? It's a sort of a journal, isn't it? Isn't yours? Who for? Oddly: for me. Going through the archives of the last year and finding the mundane and less so is interesting. It's retrospective Narcicissm. Or if not that, a simple egocentric look at the past and the way I put it.

And further, why consider why to blog? Because it's a thing that I give my time to. My time is for using. For using for whatever I want or need to do. And for reasons still beyond me, I put blogging on my Need To Do list. I consider my Why? because this blogging is something I feel I compelled to do. And I need it for me. That has to be some revelation about therapeutic effects. But I'm never sure.
My blog isn't, shouldn't read like, most blogs that girls of my age, and often my religious persuasion, are writing. I've indicated that I have to spit out or gulp down vomit when I read blogs with the claims to a perfect life, a perfect husband, a perfect child. I'm too cynical to believe that crap; and I think lying about life is a statement on its own. Truth is so much more interesting and I believe has a more honest potential to inspire.

Unlike those blogs so many girls my age produce, you're not going to find pictures of the same baby in eight poses. And if I'm having a bad day or need an antidepressant, you're actually going to find out about it here; whereas on other blogs of girls "like me," those things go undisclosed. As is their prerogative; for I believe that most chicks my age blog to brag about their beautiful children and make themselves feel better about what they consider to be unremarkable lives by lying about how marvelous they are.

Perhaps that's why my blog is a Need To Do. I need to tell my truth, and I need to do it honestly and with a coarse, raw tone. I need to say it to something that doesn't matter. I need to say it, but not to a face that has feelings. Sending my truth (for truth is truly subjective) into a void where if happened upon, it's okay. But that's not why I sent it out there.

This isn't the first, second, or third time I've put words on this blog expressing my guilt about not writing. I feel the guilt; I spit words on the topic. And then I move on. Until I read something that reminds me there's a skill inside, and its painfully dying. And then I'm back here, lamenting my lack of effort. Pathetic introspecting. A downward spiral without grace.

Write, the guilt monster says, and really not very nicely.

And when I tell it I am, I'm lying.

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